Racist, Anti-Asian Flier Rocks UCLA, USC Campuses

A racist flier was sent to Asian American student groups at UCLA and USC last week, triggering investigations at both campuses.

At UCLA the flier, which references an LA Weekly story about a similar document in 2012, prompted outrage and calls for a structural response on campus to what some Asian American students see as a long-term pattern of hate and discrimination on campus.

The latest hate literature says, among other things, (NSFW language after the jump) ...

... Asian women R honkie white boy worshiping whores!!!

The flier is quite similar to one posted outside the offices of the Vietnamese Student Union and the Pacific Islanders Student Association at UCLA in late 2012.

UCLA takes these matters very seriously and is dedicated to working toward effective strategies to combat racism and bigotry so that campus can be the welcoming, respectful environment our community deserves.

The flier was sent to the Asian Pacific Coalition at UCLA and to Asian Pacific American Student Services at USC last week. USC assistant vice president of media relations Carl Marziali told us, "I checked with our Department of Public Safety and they confirmed they're looking into it."

Courtesy UCLA Asian Pacific Coalition

The school's director of Asian Pacific American Student Services, Mary Ho, along with its assistant director of Asian Pacific American Student Services, Jonathan Wang, wrote an open letter to students that says, in part:

We will not tolerate such harmful, derogatory and racist slurs directed at the Asian Pacific American community or at any communities.

Some UCLA Asian American students say the flier is part of a pattern of hatred on campus in recent years, a pattern that includes the infamous white-girl video rant "Asians in the Library" and 2012's anti-Asian flier.

Anh Nguyen, a fourth-year global studies major who is president of UCLA's Vietnamese Student Union, said it's time for more concrete representation for Asian Americans within UCLA's administration.

She noted that of about 37 people who are deans, vice chancellors or the chancellor at the upper reaches of UCLA's administration, only three appear to be of Asian descent. Asian Americans make up about 35 percent of the undergraduate student body and comprise the largest ethnic group on campus.

Nguyen would like to see more Asian American student input in the process of choosing someone to fill the new position of vice chancellor for diversity:

We've been using the flier to raise awareness. It's a shocking and hurtful event. It happened last year with the other flier. It happened my freshman year with the Alexandra Wallace incident ["Asians in the Library"]. Nothing has really been done to address it. We need a conversation: What can the university do to implement permanent structure changes? It's about doing something about it.